Auberon Waugh - Journalistic Career

Journalistic Career

Waugh began his journalistic career in 1960 as a cub reporter on Peterborough, the social/gossip column of The Daily Telegraph. In the long and prolific career that followed he wrote for The Spectator, New Statesman, British Medicine and various newspapers (including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Evening Standard and The Independent). From 1981 to 1990 he wrote a leader-page column for The Sunday Telegraph.

His work as political columnist on The Spectator coincided with the war in Biafra, a mainly Catholic province that had tried to secede from Nigeria. Waugh strongly criticised Harold Wilson's government, especially the foreign secretary Michael Stewart, for colluding in the use of mass starvation as a political weapon. He was sacked from The Spectator in 1970, but with the support of Bernard Levin and others, he won damages for unfair dismissal in a subsequent action.

He was opposed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and criticised the Church that emerged from it. He was often critical of Archbishops Basil Hume and Derek Worlock.

A comment printed in one magazine from a reader at this time was:

Auberon Waugh

Is a baugh.

I’d rather

Read father.

In 1990 he returned to The Daily Telegraph as the successor of Michael Wharton (better known as "Peter Simple"), writing the paper's long-running Way of the World column three times a week until December 2000. In 1995 he finally ended his long association with The Spectator, but in 1996 he rejoined The Sunday Telegraph, where he remained a weekly columnist until shortly before his death.